Chapter14

 

 

The dots showed on the screen – vaguely blue  against a landscape of gray with u-shape of the motel in the middle like the center of a web. The image shivered at intervals as winds over the Palisades buffeted the drone.

The small red light on the bottom of the screen blinked as an indicator that this was no mere observation drone, but one fully armed.

Someone, somewhere asked about the car. Another voice, sounding like the supervisor, said, “We have the car tracked. Stay focused on the motel.”

The retreating vehicle vanished from the screen to the left, leaving the faint outline of the sprawling motel in the middle, the shape of the building, and its pool, and with parking lot in front.

The dots came towards this shape from three sides, like maggots crawling towards a dead or dying body, seeking to feed off of it.

The remote voice of the supervisor gave instructions to those dots, telling which to approach first, with the principle instruction aimed at drone operator not to attack until the ground units had secured the documents.

This was the first open mention of the documents – as if a forbidden subject earlier, but less so the closer they got to retrieving them.

What was so precious that the government would use so much of its black operations budget to get them back?

The dots moved closer. Radios rasped with updates. The drone wavered in the wind. Everybody waited for the order to attack.

 

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Southerland stood up the moment the motel door closed, his hands shaking so much he struggled to keep the machine pistol still.

“Contain your self,” he mumbled out loud. “You’ve been through this before.”
He moved across the room to the window, and edged the blind open slightly with the barrel tip of his pistol and stared through the narrow opening at the parking lot beyond.

But this was not the jungle of South Vietnam, or even the rough mountains of north Afghanistan, but the heart of suburban Bergen County.

Outside, early morning delivery trucks made their way to and from the nearby George Washington Bridge. Blue collar workers in decade old pickup trucks and old jeeps steered between the trucks in a never ending game of chicken, macho drivers half asleep and in no way prepared for the darker agents that operated around them and in their name.

Somewhere elsewhere in the motel a radio went on with overloud news broadcast determined to wake up one of the motel occupants for some trip to an office or meeting on the Manhattan side of the bridge.

Southerland took a deep breath, then another, until his hands ceased shaking.

They were out there and closing, he knew, and then he took another deep breath before glancing back at the other side of the room and the door to the bathroom he had left open, studying in particular the small window above the toilet.

With great care, he moved to the front door, made certain the locks were latched, then crossed the room to the bathroom.

A phone booth – those now historic icons to another century – was only slightly smaller than this space was. But it had its function.

He put the pistol down on the back of the toilet, closed the lid over the basin and climbed up on it so he could reach the window. With a large pocket knife, he managed to get the window frame loose and pulled it completely out of the wall, leaving an open space through wish the cool morning air rushed in.

Something clicked and he turned to look towards the front door.

The locked door latched clicked open as if someone on the other side had a key, and then the door opened inwards.

Southerland grabbed his pistol from the sink, and then leaped through the narrow opening where the window had been.

He felt rather than heard the impact of the bullets that ripped open the wood around the window frame, one ripping open the side of his shoe as he fell to the ground outside, ground hard with the frost yet muddy from its nearness to the building. Frozen footprints from his previous visit here still showed, and he followed them as if they served as a path to salvation. Behind him, repeated flashes of gun fire showed through the gap in the wall, as invaders shot into this corner and that, and were not yet aware that he was no longer in the rooms at all.

He glanced down at his wrist watch as he ran in a crouch away from the window and the building, down between low, metal storage sheds that made the rear boundary of the motel’s property and then onto another property and an alley between buildings dedicated to light manufacturing, and finally, through these to a 24-hour service station. He counted slowly as he ran, and when he reached number ten, he pushed the button on his watch.

The flash came first, illuminating the exterior walls of the motel and gas station with one vast spray of light as bright as sunlight – each crack in the concrete wall vividly revealed, then blackened out again, leaving Southerland stumbling even before the concussion knocked him off his feet.

He landed on his hands and knees, crawling for the short time it took to regain his feet, before the second blast came, and the third, flames and smoke billowing out of the vented windows of the motel rooms behind him, the worse of which came out of the window frame through which he had just made his escape.

He felt drunk and staggered into the light of the gas station looking like one as customers and attendants ran towards the motel to see what the ruckus was about. None looked twice at him. He made his way to the side of the station to where a black Mercedes was parked.

He pressed the clicker that opened the doors and fell into the seat behind the steering wheel, breathing hard, his hands trembling. It took two tries to get the key into the ignition. His hands bled from his fall, leaving blood on the steering wheel.

He cringed and engaged the gears.

 

 

 

Just as the car started forward, a dark shape leaped out of the mouth of the alley from the direction of the motel, fist tight around the handle of a nine millimeter pistol.

The pale face rushed at the car from the driver’s side, but had no time to raise the pistol and shoot, so banged at the fender and then the side of the window as the car moved – falling back at the impact as Southerland jerked the car in man’s direction.

The thump sounded and the man was gone.

Southerland reached over and popped open the glove compartment, out of which he drew another small, black box with additional switches, and as he steered around the gas station and down its drive to the highway, he flipped one switch after another, and behind him, showing in the rear view mirror, one car in the motel parking lot after another began to explode as well, casting a barrage of heated glass, plastic and metal into the highway – forming a cloud so thick with shrapnel no one in the assault force on the motel could possibly have survived.

The rearview mirror clouded with the reflected image of billowing smoke, and if any of the ghosts that had surrounded the building were still there, he could not see them, nor could they see him as he fled.

Once out of view of the disaster, he slowed the car so that it kept pace with other Manhattan-bound cars, his just one more commuter making its way in the growing volume of the morning rush.

His fingers bled, cut from some contact with glass or splintered wood during the flight, as did the palms of his hands from his fall in the mud. Still, he managed to pull out of his pocket the piece of paper Ponci had given him. His hands shook as he unfolded it. Then, he spread it out on the dashboard so he could read it under the dome light. He squinted. The paper had an address in Newark.

 

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The ruins of the motel still smoldered as Ransom steered the unmarked police car through the rubble of what had once been a parking lot. Beams of winter sunlight streamed through the rising smoke like the edge of sharp blades, highlighting the twisted metal that had made up part of the buildings framework. A door from one of the motel room had flown across the lot to land against a telephone pole. Lamp posts that had bordered the walkway littered the lot nearer the building like large metal twigs.

Fire trucks, police cars, ambulances created a barrier along the highway as well as along the gas station property on the other side, as if creating a ring to contain the devastation, long after the holocaust had passed.

“Fuck!” Miller muttered from the passenger seat. A police officer wearing a state trooper’s uniform motioned for the car to stop.

Red and blue lights swept over the scene and into the car, painting Miller’s face alternately red and blue. “This looks like 9/11 all over again.”

“Looks like, but not nearly as extensive,” Ransom said, “and none of our boys got trapped inside this time.”

The memory of the radio calls crackled into Miller’s mind as he stared down at the police radio dangling from under the dashboard with the expectation of hearing those voices again, haunting, ghostly voices screaming “We can’t get out.”

Behind them, beyond the wall of first responding vehicles, the highway was littered with additional vehicles – police and others that had come from two or three dozen local municipalities, including some from the military. Several armored vehicles had positioned themselves across the highway, closing off commuter traffic to and from the George Washington Bridge. Members of the National Guard moved along the perimeter in full combat gear, clutching automatic weapons they were too late in coming to use.

 

On the inside of the stretched arms of yellow plastic tape, local police brass milled around with men in suits, some Miller recognizing as with the look of federal agents, but others with the dazed look that comes from local officials thrust into the midst of some huge catastrophe far beyond the scope of their little towns to handle.

The federal agents seemed to have taken charge, motioning directions to others in blue jackets emblazoned with the letters FBI on their backs.

“Park here,” Miller told Ransom. “I need to get out and talk to somebody.”

“If anybody will talk to us,” Ransom said, pulling the car to the scorched curb that had once marked the boundary between the parking lot and the highway.

“We’ll see,” Miller said, and yanked the door open the minute the car halted, and strode towards the nearest cluster of official looking people.

FBI men scoured every inch of the crime scene like maggots, moving from one corner to the next, detailing everything they could. A van glowing blue on the interior suggested some mobile computerized network. More military trucks rolled up and dumped out even more soldiers – these looking to Miller like regular military or perhaps even some elite company; they had a stern look that suggested experience the national guard lacked.

“This doesn’t look like a police matter any more,” Ransom mumbled under his breath, catching up with Miller’s quick stride.

“Someone blows up a motel like this, and people are bound to think terrorism,” Miller mumbled back.

“Especially like this,” Ransom said. “But no terrorist could do this. At least not the kind we’re used to.”

“What do you mean?”

“This was too sophisticated, high end explosives, placed in a way that would do the most damage,” Ransom said. “This was a professional job – plastic stuff if I’m reading the scene right. Most likely military issue.”

“Which may explain why the feds got here so fast,” Miller said. “Watch what you say around these people.”

Miller paused outside the circle of men, the lone military figure, a cornel with salt and pepper hair and a thin gray moustache looked up. Miller recognized the unit patch as one that belonged two one of the state’s National Guard units, most likely out of Jersey City. He wore desert fatigues – more or less confirming Miller’s assumption, since that unit has just returned from service in Afghanistan.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” the cornel asked.

Miller displayed his badge.

“You have a real mess here,” Miller said. “A work of terrorists?”

“If it is, then it’s the best work I’ve seen since Vietnam,” the cornel said.

Miller glanced at Ransom who gave a short nod.

“This isn’t your run of the mill terrorist thing,” the cornel went on. “I was weaned on explosives and I learned a long time ago that everything has its own signature. After years of seeing disasters like this, I’ve come to recognize one type from another.”

“And what type is this?” Miller asked.

“I can tell you what it isn’t,” the cornel said, his voice lowered as he took Miller’s arm and led him away from the pack of suit and tie people. “It isn’t what they’re trying to tell me it is.”

“What are they selling?” Ransom asked.

The cornel looked sharply at Ransom.

“Don’t worry about him, Cornel,” Miller said. “He’s with me.”

“It depends on who you talk to,” the cornel said. “The FBI guys are trying to tell me this was a mafia thing.”

“And the others?”

“They’re worse. They’re all hush hush from down DC way. They’re selling this as a terrorist thing gone wrong – you know like that hippie thing back in the early 1970s when the bomb makers set off their own bombs by accident.”

“You have a better theory?” Miller asked.

“Look around,” the cornel said, waving his hand. “This was more than one detonation. The first one might have come from one of the rooms, and even that was too sophisticated for someone’s bomb blowing up in his face. The others were timed or set off my remote.”

“Timed?” Miller said.

“Designed to go off one after another.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know what it means here, but I know what it would mean over seas.”

“Which is?”

“This is CIA or someone that’s worked with them,” the cornel said. “I’ve seen this done more than once over there, designed to kill everything – someone got out of that motel over there and intended to make sure that nobody followed him. Those boys in the suits weren’t saying much, but some of the bodies – a least what was left of them – weren’t guests at this place.”

“And guess as to who they were?”

“Professionals,” the corner said. “At least that’s my guess from the armaments that were recovered.”

“Military issue?”

“No, at least not any my boys would get. If these visitors were soldiers, they weren’t in any traditional sense. But I’ll bet you my pension that the man who set the explosives was.”

 

Miller gave a sharp glance Ransom, who in turn gave a stiff nod.

A chill went through Miller that had little to do with the morning air. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that one man could cause such havoc.

“What about this other guy?” Miller asked the cornel. “Did he get caught up in his own blast?”

“My best guess, no,” the cornel said. “The first blast inside was designed to kill whoever was coming in after him.”

“But why blow up the vehicles in the parking lot?” Ransom asked.

“There were others approaching from outside,” the cornel said. “He either wanted to kill them or make sure they couldn’t get to him as he made his escape.”

“How did he do that?” Miller asked.

“Out the back window – a small bathroom window. Normally a man couldn’t squeeze through it, but he apparently widened it before all this. That’s why the others didn’t cover it well. Someone did see him. But he shot him before getting through to the gas station where he’d stashed a car. One of the attendants saw the car bolting out just as the explosions.”

“Do you think any of the others got away?” Miller asked.

“I can’t say for sure,” the cornel said. “But I think that’s part of what our friends in the suits are trying to figure out.”

“Maybe one of us should go ask them about it?” Ransom suggested.

“I wouldn’t bother,” the cornel said. “They’re all hush hush, mumbling things about national security. I’m told we’re supposed to be relieved shortly. They’re bringing on their own people to take over the scene.”

“Why are you telling us all this?” Miller asked.

The colonel’s thin brows rose with an odd look of surprise, then he laughed.

“Let’s say I’m a good judge of character,” he said. “I like you boys.”

“And them?” Ransom asked.

The brows fell and the cornel scowled. “I’ve seen their kind overseas,” he said. “They got a lot of good boys killed for no reason. I suspect they’ll do as much with this if they get a chance.”

“Thanks, cornel,” Miller said, and tilted his head to signal Ransom to return to the car.

 

 

Miller closed the car door before he said anything.

Outside, the shift in security had started, the cornel and the rest of the New Jersey National Guard climbing back onto the trucks in which they had arrived.

Again, Miller shuddered, watching as new soldiers replaced the outgoing soldiers, but not soldiers Miller would have considered soldiers had he seen them elsewhere. These did not have the green uniforms of the outgoing batch, but were dressed entirely in black, black helmets, black shirts and shoes, black pants, belts and straps.

They were grim men with grim expressions, who slid into the spots vacated by the leaving soldiers – but unlike those they replaced, they wore no name tags above their breast pockets, nor sign of rank on their sleeves or collars. All, however, wore a single white patch, that contained the pattern of a square within a square within a square.

“What do you think?” Miller asked as Ransom slipped behind the wheel.

“About them?”

“For a start.”

“Private contractors.”

“For security the military can’t handle?”

“You’d be surprised at who can get top clearance these days,” Ransom said.

“What about the rest?”

“I think the cornel had it about right.”

“You’re telling me one man did all this?”

“Not our man,” Ransom said. “But maybe the man he came here to meet.”

 

 

 

 

“You mean the man from the apartment in The Bronx?”

“It would seem so. After all the Bronx guy was military, too, and tried to kill our guy back there.”

Miller glanced around at the devastation that became all too clearer under the harsh light of dawn with its smoldering remains and the bits and pieces of human anatomy sizzling from the heat of the explosives that had set the place ablaze.

“This seems a little excessive to kill just one man,” Miller mumbled.

“Maybe our man has a team,” Ransom suggested.

“No,” Miller said. “Our guy works alone. It’s his signature. He’s a solo act. And this is all too sophisticated. He’s old school.”

“So is some of this by contemporary standards,” Ransom said. “You heard the Cornel. This is a Vietnam era booby trap.”

“Military old school,” Miller said. “Our guy isn’t military. But this guy and the people he killed were.”

Miller kicked at a piece of plastic near his feet, the remains of circuitry.

“This stuff here is new school,” he said. “Besides, if our guy had a team, he wouldn’t have gone back to the hotel to get the briefcase.  He wouldn’t have chased the soldier into the West Village. I don’t think we would be here now. If our guy was here, he left before this happened.”

“So we’re back in the middle of some inner agency thing?” Ransom asked.

“I think there are more fingers in this pie than there is pie to go around,” Miller mumbled. “Our guy has something everybody wants, and it seems there is no limit to the kind of damage they will cause to get it back.”

“Do what are you saying?” Ransom asked.

“Someone hired our guy to get something the solider had, something very sensitive. Most likely very top secret. So you have federal agents coming after him. But whoever hired our guy is rogue, and wants the information for himself. Our guy apparently didn’t have the stuff when they met in The Bronx, and went back to get it. This was supposed to be their second meeting to make the exchange.”

“So if he was here, then he passed it over to the guy from the Bronx?” Ransom asked.

“I don’t think so. Either our guy is holding out for more cash now that he knows how valuable the stuff is, or he couldn’t give it to the guy from the Bronx for some other reason.”

“Which means what?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Miller mumbled.

“Well, if this wasn’t meant for our guy, then the guy from The Bronx was expecting company other than our guy,”

“I think they both were,” Miller said. “And you’re not going to find either guy in this mess. I’ll bet you a four course dinner that we’ll find our guy’s stolen car abandoned nearby.”

“I’ll check with the local police,” Ransom said. “But this does complicate matters.”

“How so?”

“We have two find two men, instead of one.”

“Two men and a woman,” Miller said. “She’s working with our guy I’ll bet.”

“Stockholm Syndrome?”

“Something like that,” Miller mumbled.

“Well, if we find this guy, we’re bound to catch up with our guy and the woman,” Ransom said.

“How do you figure that?”

“They seem to be part of the same dance,” Ransom said. “Our guy met with this guy in the Bronx and again here, and I think our guy didn’t have what this guy wanted.”

“You mean the stuff in the brief case?”

“Yes, our guy probably didn’t trust this guy after the first meeting.”

“Then why did he come here this time?”

“To arrange another meeting, on his own terms,” Ransom said. “Some place he could control better.”

“But where?”

“A good question,” Ransom said, then was distracted by the rasp of the police radio.

 

Miller recognized the harsh voice of his superior, and knew it could not be good news.

But he waited to let Ransom handle the man as he surveyed the chaotic landscape, and the dark figures who picked through the wreckage looking for clues. They reminded him of those horrible days that followed the attack on the World Trade Center, those days when there was still hope survivors might still be found. How many good men and women from his own department had perished, joining the lost souls from the floors above that had been incinerated?

A chill went through him. He didn’t know why, but somehow, this and that seemed to connect, as if one led to the other. He simply couldn’t see the threads.

Ransom broke through these thoughts, tugging on his sleeve.

“He wants to talk to you,” Ransom said.

Miller took the radio and held it up to his ear.

“Where the hell are you?” the captain said, no doubt repeating a question he had already asked Ransom and so knew the answer to.

“New Jersey, sir,” Miller said quietly.

The pause that followed was orchestrated, the way all things the captain did were. The man continually strived for effect.

“That’s a bit off your beat, isn’t it?” the captain finally said.

“It’s where the trail led us,” Miller replied.

“Explain.”

“We got a report from a toll collector on the George Washington Bridge that the stolen vehicle had passed outbound. A local police officer reported seeing the stolen vehicle parked in the lot of a motel.”

“And?”

“The whole place appears to have exploded in our faces, literally,” Miller said, holding the send button a little longer than necessary as to avoid an immediate response. When he released it, the captain was half way through another sentence.

“…understand?”

“Repeat?”

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me, Miller,” the captain said, more harshly than usual.

“I’m saying the trail has gone a little cold,” Miller said.

A pause came, filled with the static of other more distant voices, spirits of the universe Miller had spent most of his life living in, haunted by, and regretting. Sometimes, he even imagined voices of the long gone captive in that haze of sound, friends, his former partner and others condemned to live their lives in the ether of old radio transmissions.

When the captain’s voice returned, it sounded different, harsher, containing a note that seemed not to correspond to the situation.

“I think you should come back to this side of the Hudson,” the captain said.

“But this is where the…”

“I wasn’t asking, Sergeant,” the captain said. “In the morning, I want to see you in my office.”

The transmission ended. Miller handed the radio back to Ransom.

“That doesn’t sound right to me,” Miller mumbled.

“Perhaps not,” Ransom said. “But he is the boss.”

“Turn the radio off. In case, he thinks of something else to say.”

“Not a good idea; we need the radio.”

“For what?”

“To find out if anybody’s spotted the stolen car, of course,” Ransom said, clicking through a number of channel, pausing to speak at intervals in a carefully scripted language his kind always used, part of some not-so-secret society of his kind, all of whom knew the code, and being members of the same brotherhood, willing to offer assistance even though many of the parties involved had ever laid eyes on the others.

Miller made his way back to the car as Ransom spoke, studying the ruined landscape with a vague hope that he might see something in all this that others had missed, some important detailed overlooked that might allow him to pick up the trail again – he was desperate to follow this thread, guilty about having lost the trail so many years earlier.

Once in the car, he turned on the heat, but it seemed incapable of curing the bone-chilling ache he felt. Then, he noticed an odd shape amid the crowd, a dark man in a dark suit wearing a fedora long out of fashion, a man who seemed to be in charge, and who stared back at Miller once he became aware of his looking.

It was a cold, deadly stare full of fearful suggestions.

Miller shuddered.

Ransom finished his conversation.

“We’re in luck” he said. “The Hackensack police say they found the car.”

“And our friends?”

“Long gone.”

“Did they steal another car?”

“Hard to tell for certain. But I suspect not.”

“What makes you say that?”

“A routine patrol responded seeing two people fitting the description of our suspects boarding a bus at the Hackensack bus depot.”

“Are we certain they’re our suspects?”

“No way to tell for certain,” Ransom said. “But they drew attention. The man appeared to be bleeding.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know what bus they took?” Miller said, feeling warmth come back into him, and hope. The trail was not as cold as he’d assumed.

“Yes,” Ransom said. “I can’t swear to where they get off. But the final stop for that bus is in Newark.”